Julia Schramm and DMCA Takedowns – a Pirate and Her Copyright

Julia Schramm, member of the national board of the Pirate Party Germany, published a book which came out a few days ago. Since she is a publicist, this should not have come as a surprise. Julia announced the book well before she was elected into the board of the German Pirate Party during April of 2012. Time passed by, and suddenly – one gets the impression – there was a book! It was published this week and promptly illegal downloads became available, which were taken down by her publisher, a subsidiary of Random House.

The publishing created some discussions as well as accusations. According to rumours, Julia received an advance payment of 100,000 € from the publisher. Julia herself did not confirm these rumours, but we can guess that the amount is close to the real amount according to her earlier statements. In an interview with Welt online, she explained some of the details from the contract. For example: she is not allowed to discuss her payment and she will re-gain the intellectual property rights for her book in ten years (when she plans to make it publicly available). According to the same contract, no one who downloads the book will be charged. They receive a warning (a “yellow card”), and might be charged if they then download it again.

Julia is already since before a very controversial person within the German Pirate Party. She used to be part of the “Spackeria” and roused complaints when she stated that “privacy is so Eighties”. Later, she described the term “intellectual property” as “disgusting”. This description now comes back to haunt her, whilst her publisher defends Julia’s intellectual property.

However, it seems, signing the contract did not turn out to be the best decision for Julia. Being part of the Random House Group, the subsidiary ‘Knaus Verlag’ is sure to defend the rights they bought no matter the cost. Soon after the book was published, the first illegal download appeared – a Dropbox file, linked from a website that was set up for this sole reason. According to rumours, this website was set up by the German tabloid ‘Bild’, in order to get a nice story from the expected takedown notice. Unfortunately it was not possible to confirm these rumours. The illegal downloads did not occur solely on Dropbox: there was also a copy uploaded to the German Pirate Party Wiki.

The publisher had all these files taken down via a DMCA notice. These takedowns then obviously led to international media reporting that a prominent pirate acts in contradiction to the party values. The German manifesto states:

“We therefore demand that copying, providing access to, storing and using creative products for non-commercial purposes must not just be legalized, but actively promoted to improve the public availability of information, knowledge and culture, because this is a prerequisite for the social, technological and economic development of our society.”

One blog already suggested, that paying 100,000 € is not a large sum if the “content-mafia” wants to disable the Pirate Party. Having a well known Pirate Party member sign a contract that allows to violate the party values in her name is sure to damage the public opinion of the whole organization.

The DMCA Take Down Notice at Dropbox

What makes the situation strange is the fact, that the German Pirate Party officials did not issue any official statement concerning the issue and their and/or Julias position. On request, we were told that “the discussion around the publication of the book “Klick Mich” shows impressively the big necessity to consider new solutions for copyright. The helpless actions of the publisher Random House, facing the leaked online versions, shows how much publishers lost control in the informational age. It is about time to discuss a reformation of the copyright laws. Julia could not have offered a better example than the publication of her book.”

This half-official statement is most likely not enough to calm the media and the outraged pirates. A strong statement by Julia, explaining her reasons and the situation with her publishing company, might work more effectively. Calls for Julia to step down can already be heard, unfortunately she was not available for a statement for Pirate Times.

12 Responses

Well, what I really tried to explain is a little bit different: If this really miserable book would have been the kind of book German politicians sometimes tend to write – being paid large sums by pressure groups and companies, i.e. a kind of bribery given the fact that these books are too bad to sell more than modest numbers – this special case of Mrs. Schramm and “Klick mich,”and the outcry following the publication, would be a kind of textbook example how to get parties and organisations in big trouble with rather low costs (you know,, greenwashing etc). What Mrs. Schramm is trying to tell is the story of a young, talented and sometimes kinky author and an old. large publishing house trying to find new ways of handling copyright issues without sending bills as soon as someone tries to provide free online copies. However, this “compromise” is ridicoulous compared to the ideas the German pirate Party actually is trying to win elections with. So, many party members and voters get angry, and the newly elected leading figures of the party – some of them close friends of Mrs. Schramm – desperatly try to make people believe the Schramm way would be a possible Pirate way to handle such cases. Some say they do it as they themselves have brought down the party from whooping 13% to very humble 6% in less than half a year. They would like to stop the raging discussions about failures, and so this fall is going to be really hot indeed. My article was retweeted several hundred times which might give you a little impression of the intensity the case is being discussed. And I would rather tend to say that Mrs. Schramm got the wrong side of the stick.

Seems like a win-win. Nothing beat a scandal when it comes to making money.

Even if one finds intellectual property bad, it is hard not to play by the rules of the game. If it was as easy as just ignore intellectual property laws then there wouldn’t be an incentive to run a political party for changing these laws, would there?

The “party values” should perhaps be revisited if they don’t work. Pirates arguing for CC I think are missing the point. CC for everything isn’t the answer, nor is it wise to demand for free stuff. There is no “the answer”, if there was, then all other parties would happily copy and remix. Instead PP has a unique angle… its own market.

The core of IP law criticism isn’t depending on some naive idea where everyone shares everything with everybody else. In fact there are many pirates who feels that secretes are important. What we agree on is that preventing anyone from seeking information or making use of available information to improve the life situation is bad. The Pirate party is about finding the balance between private and public, not to go to an extreme or the other. The tipping point is where we have optimum for a rich culture, high degree of knowledge transfer and fast paced innovation. PP is a progressive party not a radical party.